


and by daybreak we'll be gone

by procrastinatingbookworm



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: ADHD Zagreus, Attachment Issues, Canonical Child Abuse, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mentioned Gaslighting, Stream of Consciousness, but it actually turned out pretty good, i wasn't going to post this because it didn't go where i meant it to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29159067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: Contemplations on love and fear, on a backdrop of the knowledge that it doesn't take hate to make cruelty.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 67





	and by daybreak we'll be gone

The worst of it is this:

Zagreus knows his father loves him.

He wouldn’t be doing this otherwise.

Zagreus knows, because he knows that Hades loves what he loves with his whole heart and both hands, he knows because it’s the one thing Hades passed down to him that he doesn’t hate. 

He doesn’t _like_ it—the beautiful mess he’s made with both Thanatos and Meg is proof enough that his love does him no favors, but he doesn’t quite hate it the way he hates some of the other things he shares with Hades. It’s too ingrained in him for him to hate it and not crumple in on himself.

There’s so much of himself that he hates on principle, because it’s mirrored in his father. There’s so much _more_ of himself he hates because of the ways he’s managed to cause harm, to those he loves and just in general, wherever he goes. 

He still hasn’t forgiven himself for the look on Theseus’ face when Zagreus killed Asterius the first time, and he doesn’t even _like_ Theseus!

The point is, there’s so little of Zagreus that he can even tolerate, so he takes what he can get.

Like the way he loves: with his whole heart, with both hands, the way his father does. With his mouth and throat full of it. It doesn’t serve him or his father well—he can admit that similarity. 

The difference is that Zagreus can’t imagine treating his child like this.

If he's being honest, he can’t imagine _having_ a child, just thinking about it makes him feel… _wrong,_ off-balance, Satyr-poison sick to his stomach with all the possible ways that could go wrong, but that’s not the point.

The point is that Zagreus can’t imagine treating _anyone_ like his father treats him. Like his father treats anyone, but especially how he treats him. How his father has always treated him, even when Zagreus was trying to be what he wanted.

The worst thing is this: Zagreus knows exactly how Hades got from love to where he is. It lays itself out in his mind like a map: the safety of lies, of denial, of sharp words and cold shoulders. Not risking the damage the truth could do by never telling it. It’s fear, as much as it's love.

Fear is for the weak, Achilles says.

_(Fear is for the weak,_ Achilles wrote, scrawling across his Codex on the page with a likeness of Patroclus sketched with fierce abstraction, as though he were carving the shape into his own skin. _Fear is for the weak. Fear is for the weak. Fear is for the weak.)_

Fear is for the weak, Zagreus reminds himself, as he slides Meg’s earring into his left ear, picks up Varatha, turns toward the window. Fear is for the weak.

Fear is for his father.

Zagreus hears the excuses his father will make to himself for this failure, as clearly as if he’d spoken them aloud. As clearly as he hears Coronacht’s arrows stick into his father’s flesh.

He doesn’t like the bow, not exactly—the distance feels a little more like cowardice than strategy, or maybe he just feels guilty about it for Achilles’ sake.

(“You have opinions about archers, don’t you, sir?” he’d asked Achilles, the fourth or fifth time he’d caught that sour look Achilles leveled at the bow in his hand.

Achilles had laughed—but it hadn’t been a laugh. It had just been a sigh with barbs on it. “It was an arrow that ended my life, lad. That is all. Don’t take it personally.”)

The bow is too powerful to discount for the sake of more misplaced guilt—and it _is_ misplaced, Zagreus is self-destructive, not self-deluding—so he has it in hand this time when his father falls.

It’s not the first time. It’s not even the second, or the third, but his father looks at him with the same blank shock and rage as his first death at Zagreus’ hands.

Zagreus wants to call it hatred. It would be easier if it was hatred. Not better—who wants to be hated by their own father?—but… easier. Easier to stomach the lying and the taunting and the petty cruelties, because that’s how you treat someone you hate.

Then again, Zagreus remembers when he crawled out of the Styx and his father acted as though their fight hadn’t happened—as though Zagreus had imagined it.

He’d known better. He’d known right away that it was just another lie, but…

But it had still been terrifying. Just for a moment, for a single breath, when he’d doubted himself, doubted his own mind.

His father had done that to him. Had looked in his eyes and lied to him on purpose, knowing it wouldn’t take, just to hold a little more power over him for the space of his shock. Because he was afraid—afraid that Zagreus would outpace him, afraid that he already had. 

Fear is for the weak.

Fear is for the weak.

Zagreus goes to his mother. Goes to his death. Climbs out of the Styx, stands dripping watery blood onto the carpet. Smiles at Hypnos, and doesn’t feel a thing.

Fear is for the weak.

Zagreus goes back out.

He goes back out, because there isn’t a single thing else for him to do. The walls of the House close in the longer he stays between them, nearly as literally as if Tisiphone were drawing them inward.

There are conversations to have, nectar to deliver to the people he loves (with his whole heart, with both hands) just to see their worried eyes soften at the corners, but even that is brief. None of them have much to say to him anymore, as he sets out to go where they can't follow.

That hurts—of course it does, because he loves them, but it hurts less the further he gets from the house.

So he goes.

So it goes.


End file.
